The Economic Snowdown

More than any other place in the nation, Washington yearned for spring. It was partly because Washingtonians, like people everywhere, looked toward the uplift in human spirit that the season normally brings. It was partly because Washington, like many another section of the U.S., had gone through a dismal winter, strangled by heavy snows, pelted by freezing rains, chilblained and miserable. But what set Washington apart in its eagerness for spring was the Administration's expectation of economic upturn that would bring the U.S. out of a recession that would be forever associated with bleak Winter 1958.

Based on that expectation of seasonal comeback, the Administration for weeks had fought for a wait-and-see period before giving in to increasing demands for drastic, perhaps reckless, action against recession. March unemployment figures, President Dwight Eisenhower assured the nation in a special economic message last Feb. 12, should improve. Why? The answer: Spring.

Last week Spring came--and greeting it along a wide Atlantic Coast belt was the most disastrous, dispiriting snowstorm of all (see The Weather). Foul March weather, climaxed by last week's crushing blow, was almost certain to cause snowbound distortions in the seasonal economic figures, move back the expected upturn by as much as a month. Now the Administration needed still more time to examine the economy before moving toward an antirecession tax cut or an all-out public-works program. On March 21, the day Washington had so anxiously awaited, a top Administration economist gazed out a window at the heavy snow. "Give me April," he muttered. "I'd like to borrow April."

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